Paul's Concern for the Galatians
8Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. 9But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? 10You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! 11I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.
Dig Deeper
I knew a wonderful young lady, when I was teaching, that was a student of mine for a couple of years. She had a magnetic personality and was extremely bright and creative. Yet, at the age of eighteen she had one child and another one on the way, but that wasn’t her primary problem. The problem that she needed help with was basically escaping her abusive boyfriend. He was controlling, manipulative, and oppressive. She had finally had enough of him and wanted to move out of the situation she was in from living with him. We went through a great deal of trouble to get her out of that situation during a time when he did not know she was leaving and found her housing so that he couldn’t find her. Everything went off beautifully and she was free . . . until about a month later when I learned that her boyfriend was back living with her at her new place. She had found her new freedom scary and lonely and decided that she would rather have the certainty of her old boyfriend even though he was abusive and controlling. She had, in many ways, gone back into slavery and everything we had done for her felt like it had gone to waste.
Perhaps we’ve all known someone who has become a Christian and we’ve seen the incredible and faith-building changes they have made in their life only to watch the sad scene as they, for various and sundry reasons, turn back to their old life of slavery to sin. It is a heart-wrenching scene that is often difficult to watch. This is precisely what Paul is worried about when it comes to the Galatians. They have tasted freedom and now they are toying with slavery once again.
Moses faced the same difficult position while leading the Israelites out of Egypt. They were in slavery in Egypt and Moses had led them out, yet it wasn’t quite that easy. They found that the life of freedom in the wilderness was difficult and frightening, and suddenly the certainty of life in Egypt seemed attractive. They began to openly wonder why they had left Egypt at all and to claim that they were better off there (Ex. 14:11-12; 16:3; 17:3).
Now, Paul is concerned that the Galatians are doing the same thing. They had tasted the freedom that comes from being in Christ, but had found, like any other freedom, that it was wide open and scary. Freedom is not completely easy because it brings with it responsibility and requires that we think through situations and make difficult choices. This seemed more than the Galatians could bear. They have experienced that wide-open world and now seemed determined to follow those who would return them to the safer, regulated world where you know who you are and are told what to do and when to do it. This was a return to slavery in Paul’s mind.
What is perhaps shocking for us is to realize that the slavery to which Paul is referring is not their old pagan gods and goddesses but the law of Old Testament Judaism (sometimes slavery of this type can seem like the most spiritual thing to do). They were being told by the Judaizers that they needed to follow the law, be circumcised, and now we learn that they were also being told to observe the liturgical calendar of orthodox Judaism, including all of its sabbaths, new moons, and sabbatical years. For Paul this is no small thing. The law had been given by God and it was good when used properly (1 Tim. 1:8) but now that the Messiah has come and ushered in God’s Kingdom, the law is no longer needed.
Many people, still today, try to act as though Judaism and Christianity are two branches of the same tree and with just a little dialogue can find the common ground that would bring them together again. But this is not at all Paul’s position. Now that the new covenant had come, Paul sees (as John also makes clear in the book of Revelation) that Judaism is no different than any other pagan religion. Rather than embracing the true family of God based on faith, God’s grace, and the life of the Messiah, they are trying to embrace a system that is still based on ethnic and territorial relationships, and following the law. The law had been given by God but that purpose had been fulfilled. Going back to the law and treating it as an independent entity rather than a temporary measure would be like treating it as a god. It would be idolatry, plain and simple. The whole point of the various Jewish days and observances were that they looked forward to God’s great redemption, the new Exodus. Returning to those things would be like saying that they weren’t sure that God had done that yet. The message of the gospel was that He had through the Messiah, so going back to these things would be to deny the very things the gospel announced. (We should note that Paul is not against Jewish festivals per se, as he makes clear in Romans 14, he is against presenting them as a necessary observance in being the people of God.)
What Paul really wants them to understand is that when they were participants in pagan idolatry, they were in slavery. They had escaped that by what Paul initially says is knowing God, then he quickly catches himself and says that they are actually known by God (1 Cor. 8:2-3). In the Bible, to know someone is a far deeper concept than our understanding of mere intellectual knowledge of someone, which is why Paul is hesitant to say that we can know God. What really matters is God’s knowledge of us. He knows His Son and those to whom the Son has chosen to reveal God (Luke 10:22). By returning to the things of the law, they are saying that they would rather return to slavery than to be known by the personal and true God.
If they do this, Paul’s fear is that his efforts to share the gospel with them have been wasted. The word translated "efforts" here is Paul’s favorite word to describe the toils and trials of the Christian ministry. Paul doesn’t mean to imply that they were a waste of his time, but if they return to slavery that would be a waste of the great effort he has poured into brining them to freedom in Christ.
The Galatians had to learn the same lesson that many of us still need to learn. That true freedom in Christ is wide-open, challenging, and can be frightening. There is a constant temptation to want to return to safer forms of religion where we don’t have to think, but are just told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. True Christian freedom means that we are even more committed to God and His Kingdom, but our motivation comes from having a relationship with God and being known by Him, rather than being motivated by external things.
Devotional Thought
Paul was not against the observance of Jewish festivals or even of having special days, his concern was that the Galatians felt these things were necessary for them to be part of God’s family beyond entering into the life of Christ. Are you ever tempted to feel like you need something beyond your life in Christ? What would be Paul’s response to that?
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